Silence or Death
by TertiaryRaiths
Summary: The son of a priest waits to die in silence.


**Carlisle is my muse, and he gets no love. So I wrote some Carlisle love on the fly.** **;p**

* * *

It was hard to be aware of anything in the dim, heavy darkness. The fire didn't not help. When he first started burning, Carlisle was sure he had seen his father's face, sneering down at him as he held a torch against Carlisle's skin.

The illusion had gone away when he closed his eyes. Unfortunately, the fire had not.

_Silence or death_, he thought, the litany that had made up his existence for God knows how long. _Silence or death, silence or death, silence or-_

The pain was receding-he had some sort of natural feeling in his fingers. _Thank God._

Not for the first time was he glad his father could not read his mind-not that he would want to. His father declared any act that wasn't reading the Bible, praying, and fasting witchcraft.

_That's not fair, _he argued, and yet another part of him could not help but agree with his previous thought.

_Thank God Father cannot hear me. _Thanking God was the one thing he was capable of doing in the midst of this mind-numbing pain. At least he hadn't been found, at least he wasn't dead, even if something horrible was happening to his body.

Carlisle waited anxiously. Surely nothing would be left of him now but a charred skeleton, or perhaps simply dust. Was he only dust?

He tried to move his newly painless fingers, but regretted it almost instantly. A screaming agony raced up his arm to his heart. All the heat was moving towards his heart. _Perhaps it is the only part of me left_, he thought giddily. _Wouldn't Father find that quite amusing. _

It was not hard to dredge up a memory of his father angry; it was the only state the old man lived in. "Carlisle, you are too soft-hearted!!!" he ranted. "How dare you-"

The pain was definitely centered around his heart. Carlisle gasped, alarmed, as his heartrate began to climb noticeably. His blood pounded in his own ears.

He swiftly realized that he was moving, and panicked. Movement here would send cascades of rotten potatoes, which would make noise. _SILENCE OR DEATH!!!_ The words of his chant screamed in his head at frenzied levels, and he couldn't stop from moving.

Perhaps it was an angel, and he wasn't actually moving at all-perhaps it was his soul rising from his mortal body that was the reason for the queer rising sensation. At the same time, he knew neither of these were the case.

He was too disoriented to think, and all he could hear was the screaming and the sound of his own heart.

Both went silent.

* * *

Carlisle was surprised not to be dead, because by all rights he should have been. After all, death was supposed to take away the excruciating pain, and the pain was certainly gone.

He sat up-potatoes rolled and bounced down through the cellar. The stench was tremendous-he hated potatoes with a passion at that moment.

It was dark outside-he hauled himself out of the basement through the low window. The act was certainly not as hard as it had been when he climbed in.

The smell of rain was in the air-Carlisle wrinkled up his nose. The town reeked of manure after rain, more than it did when everything WASN'T damp.

_I suppose I'm not dead, _he thought wryly, _Unless I've died and gone to hell._

He hoped that wasn't the case.

_How will I explain to Father-it's certainly been a day or two..._

Carlisle wandered over to a puddle, and peered into it, trying to see the extent of the damage.

A red-eyed demon peered back at him.

Carlisle jumped backwards-the demon vanished in the same direction. He edged forwards-the demon's face appeared as his own came over the puddle.

No, it wasn't a demon. It had the face of an angel, despite the eyes, beautiful beyond mortal imagining. The golden hair above it looked like a bird's nest, though-the one sign that the creature in the puddle was him.

He noticed the thirst second, and the effect was panic. _When he bit me-_

Carlisle's mind shied away from the memory; more accurately, he was incapable of grasping it fully. His memory of the vampire was faded, like a piece of cloth that had been washed too many times.

_When he bit me, _he thought again, forcing himself away from panic. Panic was not going to help him now. _He turned me into one of them. _

"So much for going back to Father," he whispered aloud, and flinched-even his voice was different.

_Is anything of me left? _

"No," he said. His new face stretched into a smile. "Only the part that matters."


End file.
